In a January 2000 meeting with the Arizona House Speaker, Rudy Giuliani concisely if unwittingly summed up what we’ve learned during multiple Trump trials: “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.” It’s been 4 years now & Team Trump apparently still has not found the evidence needed to support their orange chaos agent’s lies & attempted coup. And by “the” evidence, I mean any evidence. Lacking that important item with which to defend their client, Team Trump is focused on strategies of delay delay delay, making non-legal arguments where legal arguments are required, attacking every democratic institution that refuses to regurgitate their Kool-Aid, desperately searching for procedural reasons to skirt accountability, & spreading lies through enthusiastic vectors of disinformation including Fox News & congressional Republicans.

In more bad news for the GOP, the main source of “evidence” in their sham revenge impeachment of the current President, Alexander Smirnov, was just indicted for making false statements to the FBI about claims central to the case. In other words, more baseless theories, no actual evidence to back them up, rinse, repeat.

If you would have told me even 10 years ago that the U.S. system of gov’t could be undermined from within to this extent by a Republican Party that had been rotting to the core since paranoid racist antisemitic criminal Richard Nixon was its standard bearer, I’d have guffawed…& I’d have been dead wrong.

To paraphrase & quote Dan Rather, legislative bodies under dictators are often a rubber stamp for the dictator’s edicts. That observation fits well with the GOP doing a complete 180 on immigration legislation last week despite months of negotiations…simply because Trump told them to. When, “if ever, in American history has an out-of-office presidential candidate held such sway over elected representatives?” asks Rather.

New playlist additions today will include 🎵 by A. Savage (Brooklyn, NY), Amiture (Brooklyn, NY, @Amiture_Music), Circolo Vizioso (Berlin, Germany, @ilcircolo.vizioso), Gaffa Tape Sandy (Brighton, England, @GaffaTapeSandy), & IDLES (Bristol, England, @IdlesBand).

The show will be rebroadcast in its entirety on Friday evening beginning at 7 p.m., Saturday at 5 a.m. & 3 p.m., and Sunday at 1 a.m. ET.

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Videos

480 Minutes / Episode 865